Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Shiver Me Timbers! New Hampshire Sinks Cap'n Tax

It was walk-the-plank time for Cap'n Tax in New Hampshire last week, when the state's House of Reps "voted overwhelmingly -- 246 to 104 -- for New Hampshire to be become the first state to repeal an up-and-running global warming cap-and-trade energy tax system." That was a bipartisan vote, and the state's senate is expected to second the motion with a veto-proof vote.

Unlike Obama's national plan, which would tax a variety of CO2 emitters at the government's whim, New Hampshire had only subjected electric utilities to Cap'n Tax's ransom demands. Even that relatively modest piracy--as compared to the widespread CO2 looting that the Obama administration has planned for the nation--was expected to separate New Hampshire residents from $70 million hard-earned dollars in hidden taxes next year.

Cap'n Tax was a pirate from the cradle, as Phil Kerpen at The Daily Caller observed:

Lisa Jackson likes Cap'n Tax's booty

RGGI [Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative] was supposed to segue directly into a national cap-and-trade system, and was designed by Lisa Jackson, now EPA administrator, when she ran New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection.* The pitch to industry was that they could get a head start on buying cap-and-trade permits for two or three dollars each, and make a fortune when a federal bill passed with permit prices ten times that or higher. Now that a federal bill is dead, RGGI is a lose-lose for everyone except the politicians who get to spend the money and the special interests receiving subsidies.

But the really, really good news is that, since New Hampshire voters are escaping from Cap'n Tax's hold, they aren't likely to become the wind in the sails of any candidate who advertises that he (or she) is sleeping in the same hammock with that scurvy scum.

*New Jersey is catching on to Cap'n Tax's infamy, too it seems, with proposed legislation in the works to hang the old feller from the nearest yardarm.